One to One: John & Yoko Review

By Lori Perkins

I came of age in the 70’s, so the John Lennon I remember lived in my city and I was honored to know that he and Yoko had chosen my home town as the most awesome place on the face of the Earth, because I agreed with them!

This documentary, about how they worked as two creatives to bring attention to injustice, was the nostalgia I needed in these times.  I have always said that Yoko gave John the freedom to be the revolutionary he always wanted to be and cement that part of his legacy.  This film really shows how they worked together as a team. 

But I was also inspired by Yoko Ono too. I researched her and knew she was an important muse in both the Fluxus art movement, as well as feminist circles.  I loved her soft ballsyness, so much so that I actually used a quote from here in my high school yearbook

“How would you like to spend eternity?

“A stone in Wales.”

Which, of course, confused everyone I went to high school with, but I was the weird literary/art kid in a school for science and math nerds.

This documentary covers the years 1972 & 1973 in New York City, when John and Yoko lived in a small apartment in Greenwich Village, like two college students (before they moved to the Dakota). It chronicles their various social justice benefits with audio recordings between them and their then-agent, Allan Klein, and their appearances on the Merv Griffith show with Allen Ginsberg and “hippie radical” Abby Hoffman.  

One of the benefit concerts was for the release of John Sinclair from his sentence for five years for possession of three joints. I was familiar with the song they wrote, but never knew that after they did this performance Sinclair was released two days after the benefit concert.

The film also chronicles their One to One concert, which they put together after they saw Geraldo Rivera’s expose on the abused mentally disabled children at the Willowbrook State School in Staten Island. Their concert raised money to bring one on one care for these disabled children.  With this concert and the expose, Willowbrook was closed forever and care for disabled children in New York City, and possibly the entire country, changed forever.  Again, I was totally unaware that they had been such an important part of this process.

The documentary ends with the ominous news that Nixon’s administration was making moves, and threats, to have them deported for their “unamerican” activities.  John and Yoko cut back on a lot of their advocacy and focused on their immigration rights as a result.

One to One: John & Yoko reminds us of what they were, what we lost in John’s assassination, and perhaps what we are living through again.